Sliding On The Edge (27 page)

From the porch I watch
Casey’s truck turn onto Kay’s
arroyo
seco
and make the rodeo ride over those
gullies and mounds that I’ve learned to love—the way
home.

Kenny calls it “shock absorber hell”
before he spits and gets out the shovel to fill in the worst holes.
Kay used to vow to fix it soon, one day, next year. But that was
before last week, when she spent the money set aside to do the
roadwork. Now those repairs will have to wait.

Tucked behind other thoughts, I have a
plan to help out with expenses—a job in the summer, maybe at Rural
Supply—if Max will trust me with the cash register. If not, I can
always wait tables at the café in Sweet River. I’ll find a way to
help smooth out at least one road for Kay.

Casey pulls to a stop and gets out of
his truck, October dust rising around him. He waves and walks
toward me, holding up a bag in one hand. “Brought your
order.”

I walk down the steps to meet him.
“Thanks.”

“
No problem. Max’s was on my
way.” His hand brushes mine when he gives me the bag, and I freeze
that moment, to save it for later.

I’m freezing moments a lot now, ever
since last week’s high-speed chase down Highway 99. My feelings are
so different—so alive, I guess I have to say—and I need to go over
them a few times, to get used to what it’s like to touch people and
not get the shakes. Get used to what it’s like to talk to
somebody--you know, in real conversations. Me--Shawna Stone--saying
things, and listening to what people say back.

Casey and I walk to the barn. I let
him go a little ahead and enjoy the view of his jeans again. He
turns to smile over his shoulder. “So how are your patients doing,
Dr. Stone?”

“
Better.”

I grab a tin pan from the bench near
the door, open the bottle of pills Casey picked up at Rural Supply,
and add water. Then I mash three pills into gruel.

“
Want me to do the other
two?” he asks.

“
Sure. Their pans are in
front of the stalls.” I hand him the bottle and enter the hazy
light of the barn, the world of straw, droning flies, and soft
equine noises.

There you
are
, I hear from the stall at the end, and
my heart fills up with what I know must be flowers. Big yellow
ones.

What? I just saw you this
morning. You want me around twenty-four seven?

He eyes me.
And your sense of humor has improved.

No. You’re just beginning
to appreciate it.

You’re probably right,
Shawna.

Magic scarfs down his pills while I
stand, leaning against his side, soaking in his warmth and his
smell, and the wonderful size of him.

He swings his head and
nudges me.
No apple?

I reach into my pocket and
pull out the package of slices.
You are
one demanding horse!

I’m making up for lost
time.
He snuffles the apple from my palm,
and I wish I could give him a hundred apples, just so I could feel
him do that over and over.

So am I, Magic. So am
I.

###The End ###

About the
Author

A native Californian, C.
Lee McKenzie has been a university lecturer and administrator. She
has written and published non-fiction article, both in her field of
Linguistics and Intercultural Communication and in general
readership magazines. For five years Lee wrote, edited and
published a newsletter for U.S. university professors who were
managing global classroom issues.

These days she writes for
young readers and teens, yet her book reviews show that her stories
appeal to adult readers as well.

She lives at the edge of a
redwood forest with her husband and assorted cats, and when she's
not writing, she's hiking or practicing yoga.

Other Writing Credits
& Books

Since she turned in her
academic hat and began writing stories, Lee's fiction and
non-fiction works have been frequently published in the
award-winning ezine,
Stories for
Children,
and
Crow Toes Quarterly
has published
her ghostly tales. Her young adult novel,
The Princess of Las Pulgas
is
available on ebook through all major online distributors Her middle
grade book,
Alligators Overhead
is now out to all major distributors as
well.

Samples of her work and
contact information can be found at
http://cleemckenziebooks.com

Sample Chapters of The
Princess of Las Pulgas

Chapter 1

Last night I pleaded with
Death, but he turned a bony back to me, pushed Hope into the
corridor and shut the door.

Now we’re waiting, all of
us. Mom in the chair next to Dad’s bed, holding his hand as if she
can keep him with us as long as she doesn’t let go. Keith asleep on
the rollaway a nurse wheeled in earlier. He’s on his side, his long
runners’ legs drawn to his chest and his head resting on his arm.
Me, scrunched down into a chair at the foot of Dad’s bed. I no
longer feel like I have a body. I’m not even tired, just numb. Then
Death. He’s backed into the darkest corner.

I twist my Sweet Sixteen
bracelet around and around, counting the tiny links. Mom and Dad
gave it to me in June before I learned how hospitals smelled at two
a.m. or how I preferred nightmares to being awake.

I hate being
here.

I hate what's
happening.

I want it over.

I close my eyes and let my
head fall back against the vinyl chair.

No. I don’t mean
that.

Two a.m.: The hands of the
wall clock go around and around. Slow. Steady. Doling out the hours
one-second at a time.

Three: I must have slept,
but I don’t remember dozing and I still feel tired.

Three-ten: Something’s
different and the shift is as sudden as it is subtle—a missed tick
of a clock, an unexplained space in the air, a suspended drip over
a sink.

A steady and high-pitched
sound tentacles its way through the room. A flat line of green
streaks across the monitor and the darkest corner is suddenly
empty.

Keith sits up on the edge
of the rollaway, staring at the floor. Mom rests her head against
Dad’s still chest. Around me the room curls up at the edges like a
late autumn leaf and I’m sure everything will soon crumble into
tiny bits.

My dad was an important man
in Channing. His investment counseling business had survived
despite the economy, and all of his clients had names on doors with
President or Chairman of the Board stenciled beneath. Dad had held
just about every office on the city council and been financial
advisor to the mayor, so the memorial service is long with
speeches, and the church is crowded with VIPs.

Mom hired the caterer that
her best friend, Maureen Fogger, always uses, so white-jacketed
strangers armed with trays of perfect small food thread their way
among the black or gray clothed guests. Our home fills with a hum
of voices.

The mayor proposes a toast;
the arts commissioner proposes a toast; three board members of
Dad’s company propose toasts. By four, people who were silent and
sad-faced earlier are now talking a bit too loudly, smiling,
telling jokes. Maureen Fogger has one of Dad’s young partners
cornered. She’s leaning in a little too close. The guy’s face is
flushed and his eyes dart around the room. Nobody notices his
silent cry for help except me.

An hour ago Keith retreated
upstairs. Mom stationed herself in the chair by the fireplace like
a lonely planet, and the guests orbit her, taking her hand,
touching her shoulder. I haven’t seen her cry since that night at
the hospital, but I’ve heard her through her bedroom door. Now I
think her whole body must be filling with tears while she waits for
the reception to end and for everyone to leave.

Dad was always inviting
people home. “Come for dinner, for the weekend, for Labor Day,”
he’d say. He insisted on balloons and confetti for special
celebrations. Confetti still turns up in the carpet from last New
Year’s Eve. He had the barbeque ready hours before my end-of-year
beach parties started, hours before Mom had a chance to tell him
whether he was cooking hot dogs or hamburgers that year. We called
him our party animal. If Dad were here, he would be moving from
group to group, telling a joke, gently guiding Maureen away and
letting his young partner escape. Dad would have loved this
“party.”

I’m not in the mood to love
anything about what's happening, so as soon as possible I slip away
to hide in my room where Quicken is curled up on my pillow in a
tight purring ball. Even with the door closed, I'm not far enough
away to mask the chatter of people downstairs. I slide open the
window facing the beach, inviting the drum of ocean waves to enter.
Their steady rhythm has always rocked me when I was uneasy. Today,
the crashing waves are angry, not soothing.

Closing the window, I fall
across the bed with my arms spread wide. Quicken arches her back,
stretches, and then brushes back and forth along my side before
curling up against me. In seconds her purr rumbles deep in her
throat.

Disappearing inside my
head, imagining a happy ending saw me through those months of Dad’s
cancer, so I need for it to get me through tonight and tomorrow and
the next day.

“Carlie, love. This is
tough, but you’ll be just fine. I know it.”

Dad used to say that
whenever I’d bring him a crisis. Then he’d brush my cheek with his
fingers and kiss the tears.

I’m not so sure this time,
Dad.

Chapter 2

This is first year since I
learned about Jack-O’-Lanterns that we don’t have one for
Halloween. Snaggle-toothed grins were Dad’s specialty. Mom turns
out the walkway lights at dusk. We don’t answer the door for the
goblins and witches.

Only one ghost is allowed
to enter here now.

Chapter 3

Mom’s friend, Maureen
Fogger, invites us for Thanksgiving dinner.

We go.

We eat.

We leave early.

I fall asleep to Mom’s
crying. It’s become as much a part of home as the sound of the
ocean outside our windows.

Chapter 4

I drive Keith to the
Christmas tree farm like Dad used to do. We saw down a six foot fir
and tie it onto the top of the car. At home we carry it as far as
the front door, look at each other and set it down in front of the
bay window.

That’s where it
stays.

Chapter 5

Mom goes to Maureen
Fogger’s New Year’s Eve fundraiser. I think Keith’s at Mitch’s
house. I cancel babysitting for the Franklins and stay home. It’s
just the TV and me with Quicken curled on my lap,
purring.

Chapter 6

“Ten. Nine. Eight.” The
drum of Time Square voices beat out the final seconds of the year.
As the ball plunges to the count of one, paper bits flurry across
the TV screen—a sudden end and a sudden beginning. I choke back
tears at that thought—the one I’ve had since I watched my Dad
die—the moment when the world grew one breath smaller.

When I switch off the
television the house goes silent. Tonight’s the first time since
the memorial service that I’ve been here after dark without Mom or
Keith someplace close by, and now loneliness crowds the
room.

I twist my Sweet Sixteen
bracelet around and around, fingering the tiny links.

Setting Quicken down I
stretch up from the couch. “Come on fur person.”

Leaving on a few downstairs
lights for Mom and Keith, I pad up the steps behind my cat. She
leaps to her cushion at the foot of my bed and curls into a tight
circle.

I wish I could fall into a
steady purring sleep like she does. I wish Mom would come home. I
even wish Keith would shuffle down the hall to his mole hole of a
room.

On my desk my journal lies
open to the almost blank sheet of paper with a date across the top.
I trace my finger over “October 22.” The rest of the page is
blotched with old tears.

Perhaps because I can’t
stand to read about the darkness inside me, I’ve avoided writing
anything since that day. I feel like I’m wrapped in a
cocoon.

“Carlie love, you’ve been
shut away long enough. It’s time to rejoin your world.”

My dad’s talking to me like
he used to, only now his words come like whispers inside my
heart.

The journal was his idea.
After I won Channing’s Scribe contest my freshman year, he handed
me a small package. Inside was this blank book embossed with C. E.
On the inside cover he’d written. “For Carlie Edmund, one girl who
has the imagination to write wonderful stories. Put some of those
ideas down and use them later when you need them.”